Pages

Can You Lose Weight On A Treadmill?

Can treadmills help lose weight? Absolutely. Treadmills are one of the most effective calorie burning pieces of exercise equipment available on the market. In truth any exercise you do above and beyond what you might normally do will burn extra calories which, provided your diet does not change, will lead to your weight stabilising and could begin weight loss.

How Many Calories Do You Need To Burn To Lose Weight?

Generally speaking dieticians recommend controlled weight loss of about 1 lb per week. In terms of calories, 1 lb of excess body weight equates to 3500 calories. There are two ways to look at this, you could set yourself the target of burning 3500 calories through exercise per week, basically keep the same diet but up the exercise load, or you could do some extra exercise and make changes to your diet so you cut your calorific intake each week. The combination of exercise and diet would see you lose a pound a week. The choice is yours.

How Many Calories Do You Burn On A Treadmill?

Depends on what you are doing, for how long and how fast. An interesting study, detailed here, was carried out by Syracuse University in 2004. In the study they took 12 men and 12 women and attempted to measure the calories burned in one mile dependant on whether they were walking or running. The study found that the men burned 124 calories per mile while running and 88 calories per mile while walking. The women burned 105 calories/mile running and 74 calories per mile walking.

Just to do the maths for you, if a man runs at 6 mph he can expect to burn 744 calories in an hour, likewise a woman would burn 630 calories. Walking at 3mph a man would burn 264 calories and a woman 222 calories. The men burned more because their average body weight was heavier than the women’s average body weight.

The numbers are pretty staggering. Basically if a man runs for an hour a day at 6mph for a week he will blow the 3500 calories out the window, lose 1 lb per week without altering diet and have two rest days. Similarly a women can lose weight on a treadmill without altering diet doing a similar amount of running.

Can You Lose Weight By Walking On A Running Machine?

As we can see you are going to be burning extra calories walking on a treadmill so you can lose weight on a treadmill. How long and how fast you walk will determine exactly how many extra calories you burn. Allied to a diet in which you reduce your normal daily calorie intake walking can be a good way to start losing weight and improving fitness and stamina to leave you feeling good.

Interval Training For Weight Loss

If you want to burn more than you would via standard continuous training on a treadmill (going at the same pace for the duration of the workout) and potentially lose more weight, you could opt for interval training.

Interval training is not for the beginner or someone who has done no fitness work or an individual who has health problems but can be used once you have got to a general level where you are used to exercising regularly.

Interval training can be used by experienced joggers through to novice walkers to get more calorific burn out of the same time in a gym. Essentially, you complete an interval of hard exercise followed by an interval of resting/normal exercise. If you are a jogger you might sprint on an incline for one minute followed by light jogging on the level for two minutes. For a walker you might up the pace for a minute to the fastest you can walk and then return to normal walking for two minutes to recover.

Exercising in intervals has been shown to burn more calories in the same exercise period compared to a workout where you stay at a constant pace through out the workout. The real added benefit is that working in intervals improves your fitness faster and your body burns extra calories after the workout throughout the following 24 hour period. Essentially you get twice the pay back for the same total length of exercise.

Whether you opt for a standard continuous training workout jogging or walking, or opt for an interval approach to your workout you will find one of the main benefits of using a treadmill is that it is a great machine for burning calories and therefore helping you to lose weight.